In New Zealand, there are old swamplands filled with swamp Kauri. Around a year ago, construction workers found a 16 m (52 ft) long log which had been buried underground for 40,000 years [1]
They used to dig up $200 million worth of timber a year, mostly exported to China, until the government cracked down on exports. It's illegal to export unfinished native timber, so exporters exploited a loophole by cutting the trunks into "tabletops", or adding basic carvings and labelling them as "totem poles", and then shipping the logs to China for further processing.
For those that aren’t aware, there was also a scandal when the main fuel line for Auckland airport was ruptured by a digger looking for swamp kauri. To make it all more complicated, the company that did it had a director married to a high ranking MP. It all got murky fast.
The Earth's magnetic poles last permanently reversed about 780,000 years ago. The magnetic event that happened ~41,000-42,000 years ago is called the Laschamps excursion. An excursion is when the magnetic field gets very weak, becomes non-dipolar, but then returns to the original polarity that the field was before the excursion. Occasionally durning these excursions the field flips directions and becomes stable in the opposite direction. That did not happen for the Laschamps. Many of these excursions have occurred since the last reversal of the field.
The article you linked to is a bit woo-woo, especially with all the Douglas Adam's stuff and the number 42. The article did not link to the scientific paper, which is an interesting read. It seems to be open access, so check it out[1].
Certainly the former, but clearly not in the spirit of it. However as long as the tax man got his share maybe that’s all that matters. Presumably the more finished product is taxed higher.
Both the letter of the law and the spirit seem to point to just using the regulation around finished furniture as a way to limit over harvesting. Why do you see it differently?
The intent of finished goods laws like this almost invariably is to protect domestic jobs. Many other countries have variations on these type of laws.
The concern is that a raw material export based economy is bad for the people who live in the country because most of the value is extracted from the country and only the most unskilled jobs are left.
This type of resource extraction was a hallmark of the colonial era, which is one reason governments are very wary of it.
Then you find wood called "cellulose products" and the cycle starts again. It's impossible to limit creativity, and also why would a government want to pursue a ban as it impacts negatively woodworkers?
Actually it does. Consider "bribe" versus "campaign donor." "Execution" versus "murder". Many cases exist. But that is beside the point.
Laws have to be specific, and that is the issue. If you can perform a minimal treatment to the object under the law, then it can be transmuted under the law and the spirit of the regulation is sidestepped.
Reason, judgement, and consensus must be part of the process.
To ban the export of unprocessed domestic wood, is it preferable to pre-define and include every possible "process" or is it better to have judges who asses whether any given would-be export is "processed"?
Also, lets skip the argument of regulatory capture/neglect by just agreeing that government transparency/accessibility and voter enfranchisement are critically important to maintaining any reasonable consensus-based system.
I really want to agree with you; this is how law should work (and why "law is like software" analogies are so fundamentally wrong, software doesn't make judgement calls). The problem is that people are involved, which means some of the judges will show poor judgement, including possibly okay'ing something if their friends do it but not if other do, or other less obviously unfair things.
I don't see a solution; the obvious choice of trying to make the law more specific and thus less reliant on judgement gets us back to the idea you are opposing.
The points stand. Campaign donations can have undocumented quid pro quos. Legality is what we agree it is, so if some consider an execution unlawful then it is murder. Consider how many innocents given death penalty and exonerated earlier (for a simple case, Salem witch trials).
I would imagine so, if only a minor amount. Seems like it increased the price I would gather, unless the international market for unique wood doesn't behave as I'm speculating :)
I am amazed in an article about bog oak no mention of dendrochronology. Scientists have been collecting and matching up tree rings from samples including especially bog oaks. This builds an unbroken chain of ring width measurements back to the last ice age. It lets wood pieces be dated to calendar year resolution, serves as the basis for calibration of radiocarbon dating curves, and enables study of past climate conditions.
Old growth woods like these are obviously unbelievably unique (and expensive).
But even if you can't find or afford anything like that, if you are ever remodeling, it's worth reusing weathered but intact lumber from your house when possible.
I pulled and reused about 50 ft of existing redwood 2x6 off my house recently as part of a remodel, refinished it with shou sugi ban (Japanese wood burning technique) and built a new gate structure with it, and it turned out beautiful.
A majority of old finish lumber in the U.S. has been painted with lead based paint. Unfortunately the safest thing to do with this lumber is throw it away.
Also in many homes floorboards have been covered with asbestos containing adhesives when newer floors were laid on top.
While we on this: I noticed lots of interior design projects, where old pallets are used( Euro Pallet being the most popular). They are all treated with chemicals to withstand harsh environments and definetly shouldn't be used indoors.
This isn't true. Most pallets are heat treated now and can be distinguished by "HT" on the side.
You should still be careful about selecting and working with pallet wood. They can be subject to hazardous spills and can have random debris embedded in them that will damage blades.
I checked a few of the pallets where I work; they're heat treated, no chemical treatment. But! While I'd feel safe using the pallets used to ship corrugate bundles, the pallets used to ship the sketchy drums of mystery chemicals look identical and end up in the same trailers headed off to some pallet recycler.
Also, dust from certain species of wood can be quite bad for you. If I didn't know the origin and history of a piece of wood, I'd likely avoid working with it.
Good point. My house's original wood is from 1998, so no risk of lead paint. Even in old houses, a lot of framing lumber was never painted though, so it should be safe to use.
Lost Art Press is worth a follow in general. If you’re ever near Cincinnati, I highly recommend checking out their store front. They focus on keeping traditional woodworking books in print, but they also do a lot of woodworking (chair making especially) in their shop.
+1
Lost Art Press is an awesome company and publishes some great books, both in terms of content and quality.
If anyone is looking to make a workbench, they released their workbench book creative commons:
https://blog.lostartpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/AWB...
I'm far from ultra rich, but I like that many of the items in my apartment have at least little bit of story behind them or their makers and are not just being purely functional or decorative. Not that I feel the need to tell the stories to anyone, but at least to me, this gives the space a lot more soul, than if I just had hired an interior designer filling it with stuff or got complete IKEA sets.
I live a fairly "minimalist" lifestyle (I don't subscribe to the ideas of minimalism, the Swedish "Lagom", "just the right amount", is closer), so I can spend more on fewer items, maintain them and have more time selecting, making or commissioning them.
When you can already buy the best possible thing then the story is what matters.
> “Even the dog wouldn’t—” “But humans will, Mr. Bent,” said Moist. “And therein lies genius. I think he makes most of his money on the mustard, but there’s a man who can sell sizzle, Mr. Bent. And that is a seller’s market.” - Making Money - Sir Terry Pratchett.
Though not as astonishingly aged, the Brewery Gulch Inn in Mendcino, Ca. is paneled with lumber from 'sinker logs' that were lodged in the silt of the nearby Big River for ~150 years. The mineralization has created color variations otherwise not naturally seen [0][1].
I had never heard of bog oak before, but this material is absolutely stunning. I really wish there was more appreciation of proper heirloom-quality furniture and things in general. I think it's part of making living more ecological, and it's a form of generational wealth. Unfortunately we live in an era of cheapest possible items, and disposal of things when they go out of style. Something like this never goes out of style.
One reason for less interest today in heirloom products that last forever: falling birthrates often mean that just one person is inheriting all the possessions left behind by multiple people. No surprise that that one person doesn't have that much room in his or her home, especially since sometimes younger generations are likely to have smaller living spaces than their parents.
I was watching that show called Antique Archeology.
It’s basically two grifters from Iowa who take the good stuff from hoarders, and collectors.
This one guy (Jersey John) pull out a 1886 Windsor chair, and acting like he’s doing the owner a favor by offered the guy $25. The owner shot back with, “I can get $40 at a yard sale?”
Anyhoo—it just reminded me how far we have gotten away from buying beautiful handmade things that will last forever, and going with junk make in the cheapest country.
> it just reminded me how far we have gotten away from buying beautiful handmade things that will last forever, and going with junk make in the cheapest country.
selection bias. all the cheap junk your grandparents bought was disposed of before you were born. you never even saw it.
People have different tastes. Just because something is old or handmade, that doesn't make it desirable.
Plus, 140 year old furniture takes specialized maintenance if you want them to last. It's kind of expensive to properly maintain or refinish antique furniture. Chairs, especially, need proper maintenance, they experience much more wear than something like a chest, and an improper fix can destroy it.
Older furniture can be much easier to repair its just a shame that the knowledge is somewhat less commanplace than it once was. Shellac finishes are a known quantity, easy to touch up or remove an re-apply. The animal glues used in woodwork of the past also allows joints to be easily disassembled for repair and often you can just reactivate the existing glue with some moisture and heat.
Of you break a spindle or a stretcher, especially at a tendon, then doing a proper fix does take skill and specialized tools. Disassembly really isn't an issue, because, like you said, some heat and pressure will release most joints with ease.
But actually fixing a break does take skill. If you're lucky the pieces will mate back together seamlessly and you can use wood glue and maybe some wax to get the piece looking like new and just reassemble them. But if the break is not clean, or there has been a previous repair (maybe involving screws or nails) then replicating a piece is pretty difficult. Turning a new piece requires a lathe, color matching stains is definitely a skill you acquire through experience.
Chips on surfaces and the like pretty much require you to have a decent collection of veneer on hand, in order to luck out and find something with similar grain patterns.
I do a fair bit of antiquing and (proper) refurbishing of old furniture (not 'upcycling'). It's not for the faint of heart. It's a time-consuming labor of love that's akin to maintaining a classic car.
I first encountered bog oak (morta) in the world of tobacco pipes. Turns out that some pipe makers have been using the material for quite a while because the grain patterns are stunning.
I think that's a bit misplaced, as millenials are in their 40's now, so they probably don't just throw things away like you assume. But also...
I used to live out in the woods and had to haul my garbage to the dump every few months. (I didn't want to burn plastic, like some of my crazy neighbors did.)
The city dump changes seasonally. After Christmas, there are piles of old toys that were replaced. After summer, there are hundreds of discarded blue-plastic kid pools. After fall there is a TON of furniture. I have no idea why: do people buy more furniture in the fall in preparation for holidays?
Anyway, I see more cheap furniture from Target and department stores than I do IKEA. Ikea is inexpensive furniture, but vastly better than Walmart, Target, Sam's Club, etc. So I didn't see a lot of IKEA at the dump.
yeah, spot-on, it's less IKEA and more the cheap assemble-it-yourself knock-offs you find at Target and Wal-Mart and the like that gives that kind of furniture its poor reputation. IKEA furniture I bought a decade or more ago is still in great shape.
Quality IKEA furniture is made of solid fir/pine/spruce and is finished with a resin paint that resists scratching pretty (though, pine is still soft and dents easily). If you put it together using some wood glue, it will hold up for years.
IKEA absolutely sells cheap furniture made of laminated MDF, and it's often half the price of the quality stuff. And it's not fair to lambast IKEA for sacrificing quality to hit a price-point when they do allow people to pay more to better stuff.
The step up from the good IKEA tier is a big step. Even cheap hardwoods like oak are a lot more expensive than s/p/f. And that's not even getting into how much more wear hardwoods put on tooling or the weight difference.
Half the time it's not even MDF anymore, it's just laminated reinforced cardboard with chunks of MDF here and there for screw points. What I find really sad is how a lot of expensive furniture also uses MDF.
Solid wood is expensive and it does have a lot of seasonal movement. I do some furniture building and there's something to be said for how workable MDF is. It doesn't warp, it's dead simple to cut through, it's pretty light, and it's cheap.
If it's used correctly, MDF is a fine material for furniture. The key to quality pieces with it seems to be in the finish. A piece that's primed, painted with high quality, durable paint, then sealed/lacquered will last a good long while.
We're not stupid or tasteless, we just don't have enough money to buy furniture that is actually nice. Also, it's not like we can afford to own homes so Ikea futons in a studio apartment it is.
I wonder if the original purchaser of that antique dresser you love would have chosen a nice Ikea one if given the choice? (Especially if you adjusted the prices for relative purchasing power.)
I would say, in case of this table, "if you have to ask for price you can't afford it".
Just the raw wood material probably costs a fortune. Given the fact there aren't many people that can produce anything out of it I assume that the prices are astronomical.
From the article: 72 lbs/ft^3. Estimating the table width at 6', and thickness at 2", that would be a total weight of 3096 lbs. Plus a healthy non-zero for the legs and other supports.
If you carry the tabletop (legs and trusses removed) with 24 people, 12 on a side, one every 4 feet, that would be 129 lbs each. OSHA would not approve.
You could probably find 24 people at a woodworking school who are up for the challenge. It might be harder to find a place to put a 43' table in the first place!
Metric system conversion should not be difficult, however, I recently learned it has been made convoluted.
Attempting to find out the per gram price of something bought in a kilogram bundle, I simply divided the kilo price by 1000. This is where it got confusing. I was told there are only 985 grams in a kilo. Me: huh?? It's literally the definition of the word kilogram, 1000 grams.
Further discussion on 1oz = 28g and least significant digit only made matters worse. Apparently, this is the standard on purchasing of items sold in kilograms.
> Apparently, this is the standard on purchasing of items sold in kilograms.
That sounds like nonsense. Standard where? What items? In countries that just use the metric system, there would be no conversion to pounds and ounces (most people would have to look up how to do it).
Hello logic, meet brick wall. Enjoy the conversation.
Lots of in between the lines intentionally left for the reader. No, I'm not in a country that normally uses kilo for weight. There are not many things sold by the kilo in non-metric using countries, but some items are regardless.
Trust me, I've already had this argument until I was blue in the face. It doesn't change the fact that this still occurs.
The people selling things in kilo bundles do not appreciate names being used. While there is no NDA in place, repurcussions are more severe than NDA's could dream. Silly questions like this are also not condoned.
Naturally OSHA is not relevant, nor are feet or pounds, in the UK.
But I feel fairly confident that there are UK-localized versions of each.
> One of the image captions states 18 people carried a single slab, so there's no way 24 would carry the full table, even without doing the maths.
That does not follow. 18 people make many carrying jobs easier, but they are not necessarily all required.
However, since the four tabletop planks are not joined into a single piece, it is clear that 12 people on a side is not a reasonable approach.
If the tabletop is removed from the support structure, then 12 people make multiple trips with each plank, at 65 lbs per person, per plank.
If the tabletop is not removed from the support structure, and we conservatively estimate legs etc at 50% of the tabletop weight, for a total weight just about 2.3 (US/short) tons ... you would need 66 people, properly distributed, to stay within the OSHA recommended lifting maximum of 70 lbs each.
To get 66 people around that table, they would need to be about 3 feet apart, which is just barely adequate working space.
Fortunately we don't move things like this using people. Not even in the UK!
That table is stunning, fascinating article. I wonder what the supply of these logs is like and whether we will see "Real Fake Bog Log Bedframe" coming out of the black market shops of Asia any time soon.
Old growth wood is physically different from what you'll find at a regular lumberyard, so I would like to think no, but I'm sure it will be turned into marketing speak eventually.
forgive me for pulling such a large quote out, but it just glows:
> “Don’t ever underestimate a craftsman,” he emphasizes, “because they’re highly disciplined, highly trained, very determined individuals. I’m a real advocate of traditional apprenticeships. I don’t think you could be good at this job other than by doing it as an apprenticeship. Doing it as an apprenticeship teaches you humility. One of the people I worked with said, ‘Somebody who never made a mistake never made anything.’ Processing bog oak went so wrong, so often; you could take the view that it’s a waste of time. Or you can say, ‘I’ve applied myself to this in the wrong way, so what can I do to do it right?’ A craftsman accepts that they’ve made a mistake. Then, rather than saying, ‘That’s a stupid idea,’ or ‘This is impossible,’ they say ‘What did I do wrong and what have I got to do to make it work?’”
chef's kiss this is sage and serious advice, well told
This is all so fascinating. The idea of using wood thousands of years old. The craft of the people doing it. The realization that there are colonies of trees still standing, yes still standing, that are hundreds of years old.
There are trees still standing in parts of the world that there are several thousand years old. Some of the oldest trees in California's redwood groves took root before the Roman Empire. E.g:
Cool recycling story. Lou Stiver has been making mandolins for decades. Some time ago, a neighbor was renovating their kitchen. Lou knew that the original cabinets were made from maple harvested from the property. He asked the neighbor for the old cabinets, and made what he believes are some of his finest mandolins.
One of the criticisms leveed against it was in line with your dismissal of white oak—because of it's structure there's more damping than a rosewood but it's otherwise bright just with a fast decay. So I suppose that lends itself well to specific playing styles. Not a standout (aside from maybe looks and rarity), but not useless either.
Can someone explain how all the planks of the bog oak fit together so perfectly? The article says go to their instagram for details but I'm not really getting a whole lot when I click on individual photos.
I haven't seen their page, but I've seen this kind of thing before. After lining up approximately where things should fit, one piece is cut in a smooth curve just back far enough to remove the live edge. The other piece is cut to match that. This can be done using router templates. IIRC there's some trickiness with the size of the router bearings / guides to account for cutting on one side vs. the other.
For the scale they are doing, they might be able to set up a more customized solution. For example, a router attached to some guide tracks like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantograph
digging through their Instagram posts, it appears as though they've developed a newish technique for this which they call a "river joint." They match the not perfectly straight edges of adjacent boards as well as they can, then they square up and rout a tongue and groove into the edges. Where there are small gaps, they add small filler pieces as necessary, but try to minimize that.
It seems like a beautiful but laborious process that is mostly applicable to a very high effort piece like this.
It looks like they cut a single 43ft board from the oak, then cut that into 4 planks for the kiln and milling process. After that completed they would join them back together. You lose at least an 1/8" for the blade width plus whatever they had to trim due to cupping, but that could be very difficult to see in the final top.
No. There was only about 2/3 of the round log remaining, and they cut (a mix of quartersawn and riftsawn) ten planks out of it. All were full-length, but some were decidedly narrower or rougher than others. They chose four main planks to build the tabletop around, with a fifth full-length cut from one of the scantiest planks to wed the book-matched left and right center planks together, in the center.
While the furniture is beautiful, (that cabinet is out of this world), do you really need bog oak to give it that beauty? Can't it be manufactured to the same beauty using wood from today's trees?
> Can't it be manufactured to the same beauty using wood from today's trees?
I work with wood, and I'd like to think the answer is yes. While bog oak does have a special beauty to it (I can't think of another wood that's similar), most wood species have their own special qualities, and I wouldn't say that bog oak is inherently any more beautiful than walnut/cherry or many other varieties.
Bog oak is notable for its rarity and difficulty in handling. This drives up the cost and makes it coveted. But beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.
One case where old wood is actually useful is musical instruments. Old growth wood is much denser than modern farmed wood, and this does (usually
Good) good things to the sound.
While artificial petrifaction is possible in a lab, I doubt it's practical at full log scale. You are only going to get this kind of timber from the right anaerobic conditions and (x) thousand years.
They used to dig up $200 million worth of timber a year, mostly exported to China, until the government cracked down on exports. It's illegal to export unfinished native timber, so exporters exploited a loophole by cutting the trunks into "tabletops", or adding basic carvings and labelling them as "totem poles", and then shipping the logs to China for further processing.
[1] https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/giant-ngawha-swamp-kauri-log-d...